Many babies, especially newborn infants, do not sleep completely through the night. These children wake up and, because of fright, hunger, or some other reason, often cry out. Often the awakened child will quickly go back to sleep on his own.
However, there are instances when an awakened child must be comforted before he will return to sleep. This comforting often takes the form of gentle rocking by a parent. This comforting requires the parent to be awakened from his own sleep. Once awakened, especially under the just-mentioned circumstances, many adults find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to return to sleep. Even if the adult returns to sleep, since their sleeping pattern has been interrupted, the overall night's sleep is not entirely restful. Since many adults work, this is not a desirable situation.
For this reason, the art has included devices which are intended to comfort an awakened child, and help that child to return to sleep. While successful in some instances, these devices still have several shortcomings which have inhibited the full commercial acceptance and success of these devices.
For example, since all children are different, some children may be more receptive to a back and forth rocking motion than to an up and down rocking motion, or vice versa. Many presently available devices are not amenable to being customized to the exact needs and desires of a particular child, and thus may not be universally acceptable.
Still further, many of the present devices still require someone to manually activate the device. Once activated, the device operates continuously. However, the manual activation may require a parent to be awakened, and to have to move into a different room to activate the device. Such requirement defeats one of the main objects of these devices, to wit: permitting a child to be comforted without requiring an adult to have his sleep interrupted, even for a little bit. Additionally, once activated, many of the present devices must be manually shut off.
If a device that is intended to comfort a child touches that child, and does so after the child has returned to sleep, the device, itself, may actually interfere with the child's sleep. If an adult is required to de-activate the device, the adult will have his sleep interrupted not once, but twice, which is often worse than being interrupted for a lengthy time but only having one interruption.
In some cases, the parent should be awakened. A principal example of such a case is where the child is ill or hungry. In such cases, the mere comforting of the child will be insufficient, and in the case of illness, can be harmful since medical attention is not being administered. Therefore, those devices that only comfort a child, even if a parent is not awakened, but do not have any means for alerting the parent of an unusual situation, are inadequate.
Therefore, there is a need for a child comforting assembly which can be operated without requiring another individual to activate the device, and which will provide comfort and attention that can be customized for a particular child, yet which will not interfere with the child's sleep and which can alert an adult if the comforting is insufficient.